Four people have been arrested over the beheading of American Nicholas Berg, Iraq sources say. The 26-year-old businessman's decapitated body was found 10 days ago in Baghdad. His killing was shown around the world on the internet.

The poor quality website video showed Berg dressed in orange overalls kneeling on the floor with his hands tied back. There were five masked men behind him. One read a statement urging Muslims to take revenge over the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers.

The masked men then pushed the American contractor to the floor and shouted "God is greatest" above his screams. His head was cut off with a knife and then held aloft. The website said the execution was performed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a top ally of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. It is not known if he was among the four people arrested.
http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-1135751,00.html

LRB

05-18-2004, 11:46 AM

Well I hope if convicted that the men lose their heads as well. There is no place on this planet for dispicable scum like the ones who did this heinous act.

Drbio

05-18-2004, 03:57 PM

I volunteer to take off each of their heads with a butter knife. Very slowly.

Smiles

05-18-2004, 05:50 PM

If the act of beheading is heinous (and I assuredly agree that it is), then wouldn't we become their equals, if we beheaded them?

Or do you mean that killing an innocent person is heinous? I agree with that too.

The perpetrators should be put to death. I would be very disturbed though for us to use the same form of execution.

They beheaded him in "retaliation" for crimes against our prisoners (or so the claims indicate).
You mean to tell me that you'd then use the same form of retaliation against their retaliation??? Because their retaliation was so heinous??? I'm dizzy with searching for the logic here!!

So, are you're excused of this crime because they did it first, and you think our original crime (torture) was less wrong?

I'm just trying to make sense what appears to be screwed up logic. Please inform me if I'm missing something here.

Murphy3

05-18-2004, 06:32 PM

No, two wrongs can make a right...not always, but they can.

dude1394

05-18-2004, 06:51 PM

Maybe they can be tortured to get the whereabouts of Zaquari. Would save a lot of peoples lives.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Four people have been detained in the killing of American Nicholas Berg, whose decapitation was captured on videotape, an Iraqi security official and a U.S. military official said Friday. The Iraqi official said the group that killed Berg was led by a relative of Saddam Hussein.

The suspects were former members of Saddam Hussein's Fedayeen paramilitary organization, the Iraqi security official said on condition of anonymity. Iraqi police arrested them on May 14 in a house in Salaheddin province, north of Baghdad. The province includes Tikrit, Saddam's hometown.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a U.S. military official in Baghdad confirmed four people were in custody. The official did not say who was holding the suspects.

Another Iraqi official confirmed there were arrests in the Berg case, but would not comment further. The official also declined to be named.

The group that was involved in the killing of Berg was led by Yasser al-Sabawi, a nephew of Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi security official said. He said American intelligence had asked Iraqi authorities to hand over the suspects, but they were still in Iraqi hands.

Al-Sabawi was not among those arrested, the Iraqi official said.

Police intelligence agents arrested the suspects as they arrived to "plot other major operations," the official said without elaborating. Four suspects had arrived early for the 7 p.m. meeting and were inside the house, waiting for a fifth associate who escaped arrest, he said.

Police seized weapons and explosives at the site. The Iraqi official said the informant who tipped off authorities was killed by unidentified gunmen the day after the arrests.

American officials have said they believe Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian wanted for allegedly organizing attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq on behalf of al-Qaida, personally carried out Berg's killing.

On Tuesday, Interior Minister Samir Shaker Mahmoud al-Sumeidi refused to comment on reports of arrests in the Berg case.

The body of Berg, 26, was found May 8 near a highway overpass in Baghdad. He was last seen on April 10 when he left his Baghdad hotel.

A video posted May 11 on an al-Qaeda-linked Web site showed a bound Berg in an orange jumpsuit. He was sitting in front of five men, their faces masked, as one read an anti-American text.

After pushing Berg to the floor, the men severed his head with a knife and held it up for the camera. They said his killing was in response to the abuse of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison.

FishForLunch

05-21-2004, 10:32 AM

Hearts and Minds
We shouldnt bother trying so hard.

Arab street will hate you till we all die, then they will start hating each other.

Just because, in an Arab country teeming with jihadists who target Americans every day, an American got butchered by hooded assassins who read a proclamation of grievances, laced with allusions to Islam, in Arabic, before hacking his head off while his shrieking agony was drowned out by that now-familiar soundtrack of atrocity, the Allahu akbar ("God is great!") chant, you probably rushed to judgment, right? Just because the barbarians recorded their handiwork and the tape, voila, instantly ended up on a website that reliably promotes militant Islam, which bragged that the decapitation was executed by none other than Abu Musab Zarqawi  whose extensive jihadist rap sheet defies accurate accounting in our limited space  you no doubt found yourself leaping to the rash conclusion that Berg's killing was carried out by Muslim extremists.

Fortunately, now comes al-Jazeera's Sam Hamod to straighten you out. Hamod, a 68-year-old Lebanese American (born in Indiana), is not only an esteemed member of the American academy  a retired professor at Princeton, Iowa, Howard, and Michigan Universities, according to one of his recent screeds  but also a poet, author, former director of the Islamic Center of Washington, D.C., and, according to his own assertion in several published stories, a former adviser to the United States Department of State. Never one to engage in bombast or draw extravagant conclusions on less than airtight proof, it was only about a week ago that we found Professor Hamod helpfully explaining how the Abu Ghraib prison abuse illustrated that...George W. Bush is not a real Christian. ("No matter what President Bush says about being a 'born again Christian,' I think he is a false witness to Christ, and that God will deal with Mr. Bush in this life and certainly in the next." To see the rest of this scintillating essay, entitled "A Muslim Leader Speaks Out", it is here ).

Now he is back with a new piece: the "Muslim Perspective" on the Berg homicide. And what might that perspective be? Well, that Berg almost certainly was not killed by Muslims.

Why? Because, you'll be comforted to know, Islam has strict rules about beheading, and they don't appear to have been followed in this case. As the professor elaborates: "When Muslims execute a person, it must be after a proper trial, with credible witnesses, and the person who does the execution must say a prayer for the person being killed and to ask forgiveness for doing the killing. None of this was done. Also, a proper way of killing in this situation is to cut the throat in one swoop, not to hack at a person's neck." Plainly, this slaying must have been carried out by one of those less-advanced cultures not yet evolved enough to have a codified decapitation practice. "Muslims," the professor is quick to add, "do not often cut off the head," but when they do you'll be pleased to learn it is done strictly "by law."

So at whom does the evidence convincingly point? Professor Hamod sees two possible culprits. First, of course, there are those crafty Israelis. Allah knows there are plenty of 'em around in Iraq, advising contractors, advising the military. This murder seems to the scholar like just the kind of thing Ariel Sharon would pull. And after all, many Israelis speak excellent Arabic  an important clue because of those Allahu akbar chants. The nuanced professor has gleaned that, here, the chanting was "strained, it was not a natural voicing of that phrase, 'God is great.'" "No Muslim," he is certain, would rave in so "awkward" a manner in the middle of a beheading.

The second candidate? To unmask him, Hamod draws on the old intelligence maxim, "Who would most benefit from this act?" Applying this insightful algorithm, the answer obviously is George W. Bush. He, the professor figures, may well have ordered this bloody depravity "to take the heat off of America for the brutality of the torture in Iraq and Guantanamo." Now there is some searching detective work.

Professor Hamod cannot help but put one in mind of Marwan Kreidie. He is yet another high-profile Muslim leader and sometime academic published in al-Jazeerah and elsewhere. (See.) As it should go without saying, he opposes the Patriot Act reforms that FBI regards as vital, and has publicly labeled Attorney General Ashcroft a "lunatic." Last month, the FBI responded by...giving him a community-service award. Asked why the agency would do such a thing, a spokesperson explained that Kreidie had been "has been very helpful to the FBI office" as a leader of the Arab-American community, who had been "educating" our agents "on the mores and customs of the Arab people." (See.) Good to know. And good to know that if our investigators need schooling in the mores and customs of beheading, there's a source at the ready for that too (and they can evidently get his number from the State Department).

The post-9/11 world is on PC-overload. Fretting over the "Arab street," whatever that is, drives policy and message. We fight war on "terror," never on "militant Islam," because God forbid anyone should ever be offended. It's not enough to be right, we need to be loved too. But if you care too much about being loved  especially by those who despise you irredeemably  you've stopped caring enough about being right. And at a certain point, you have to start asking yourself, who's showing us the love, anyway?

What are we getting for all this effort if the president of the United States is surmised a psycho-murderer and the Attorney General branded a nutcase with all the deep deliberation involved in taking the next breath. Of course we want moderate Muslims on our side, but they'll come along because we are right and we show conviction. As for the rest, we should stop trying so hard  those hearts and minds are not worth winning.

dude1394

05-21-2004, 03:38 PM

What a bunch of morons, the same folks that say fairy tale stuff like "muslims won't kill muslims". Why waste the ink on him.